After Twitter 101

If you would like to expand your blog readership beyond your family members and a few old friends from high school, you should be on twitter.

Twitter is the single best thing I have done for my blog. I have met amazing people, connected with the authors of all of my favorite blogs and found all kinds of new opportunities for myself and my little blog. Who knew the voices to all of my favorite blogs were chatting with each other on a daily basis? And also? If you have a child with autism you need to be on twitter too because they are all there. Crazy, huh?

Next, get tweeting. But as you are floundering your way around there are a few things you should try to avoid:

1. Don’t be a stalker.

When you first begin on twitter you will start by following a few people. Those people will either:

a. already know you and therefore follow you back
b. follow you back because they follow everyone back
c. follow you because their friends follow you or your profile is interesting
d. feel bad for you because you are obviously new at this so follow you back.

Since you are starting with this small group, you will see every tweet they type. DO NOT respond to someone’s every tweet. They have ten to ten thousand more followers than you. They get responses from different people for different things they tweet. If you reply to each of their tweets you may appear a bit stalkerish and possibly scare them off, thus subtracting from, rather than adding to, your measly twitter following.

2. Don’t tweet anything you don’t want the world to read.

Anything you type has the potential to be viewed by many, many, many people, even if you only have a few followers. Let me give an example to illustrate this point:

You are pretty sure that all of your followers are right handed. You send out a tweet saying “I hate sitting next to my left handed brother at dinner.” Well follower #7 is ambidexterous. He is mildly offended and retweets your rant to all of his followers, all ten thousand of them. Many are lefties, offended by your post, and therefore retweet it to their followers. Next thing you know, you wake up to chants of “Left is Right” outside your bedroom window and a crowd of people holding signs of protest with their left hands.

You now have followers, just not the kind you were looking for.

3. You will never know what everyone else said.

Twitter is not like facebook. On facebook, someone says something, everyone and their brother responds and you can see everyone’s thoughts. Not the case on twitter. I had a hard time grasping this one. I would respond to a tweet and then think “That’s it? What did other people say? Am I the only one who thought that?”

On twitter you are sending your thoughts (in 140 characters or less) out into a black hole and hoping other people are in the same black hole or at least shining a flashlight into yours and relating to something you tweet. If they relate you will know, you will be included in strings of tweets on the subject. If they do not relate your tweet is floating along in that black hole but that is okay. The great thing about this black hole is that tweets move fast and no one will remember your uninteresting tweet in about 30 seconds. All you can do is try until your black hole starts lightening up a bit.

4. Know when to say when.

Twitter is all about little pieces of conversation. Say someone tweets “Wow, it is so hot here, almost 90 today.” so you tweet back, “I would kill for some sun, it’s snowing here.” And then crickets. Unless one of you has something else witty to say, the exchange is over. Don’t force it and try to squeeze a long, drawn out exchange out of this tweet because you are new and finally interacting with someone. Your twitter friend has most likely moved on to other tweets or gone to lay in the sun. You need to do the same, except for the sun part because it’s snowing at your house which you may have forgotten in your twitter-trance.

5. Don’t wrap it up.

When you are done tweeting it is not necessary to say, “It was good talking to you, have a good day, talk to you later, bye.” and hang at the computer until someone tweets a goodbye back. Twitter is easy like that. You just jump on and off when you feel like it. Once in a while, if you are tweeting with someone specifically, and can’t possibly keep your eyes open for one more response, you should probably just say, “off to bed, nice chatting with you.” But other than that, salutations are not necessary.

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So there you have it, all of the things that I did wrong when I started tweeting.

Once you get the hang of it, twitter is easier, more casual and slightly more addicting that any other form of social interaction.

Forget the rules of conversation that are engrained in your typing fingers, relax and tweet.

And I almost forgot… you can find me @fourplusanangel or the fantastic Nina Badzin @ninabadzin on twitter of course.

I think it depends on whom you follow. There are the businesses, well, they’re just there to sell product, there are the bloggers talking about their lives and linking to their blogs, there are the bots, there are the news junkies and news services and there are the jokers. They aren’t so likely to click links, they aren’t likely to respond because they are collecting stars on sites like Favstar.fm to see who gets most and climbs the leaderboard. Don’t expect thank yous from them for RTs either, it’s seen as part of the set-up. If you like to see more of the conversation just Tweetdeck (runs up your API calls though if you make too many lists, you’re only allowed 200/hour) or tweet from an app, like Tweetie of Heltweetica etc, these let you see all about any person in whom you are interested, their tweets and all their @ replies so you do see the conversation.

If you follow funny people, hit the star and give them what they want, they don’t want conversation, typically apart from a few, they want the stars. When they see your avatar under their tweet on Favstar or similar then they may well come looking to see what you write. If it is all @ s and RTs and links don’t expect a follow back from most of them. If you are witty and pithy and original then they may well follow you. If you are going to post something someone else has written make sure you RT, including to your Facebook. The wrath will be unending if you take and make out it is yours.

Friendly advice from someone who used to be much funnier than I am now.

Being able to pop in and out is one of my favorite things. Keeping up with #wineparty with Tweetdeck sure is handy too. And I try not to clog up the feed with loads of #FF’s. I pick a handful of people that I really love to follow and try to spread the posts out throughout the day so that I don’t have a bunch of lists all that once. It drives me nuts when people do that. I know we all like a little promotion… but sheesh! Settle down y’all! 🙂

Awesome tips. Because I’m sure all newbies have done all of these! I admitted to being a bit of a stalker (my stalker was gracious and said she thought nothing of the sort). And I don’t know how many awkward conversations I’ve been stuck in. It’s like standing there, shuffling your feet, going, “Yup…So…………” It’s over!

“tweets move fast and no one will remember your uninteresting tweet in about 30 seconds.” —Thank GOD!

Twitter brought me you and many of the people who are visiting here with you today. I thought it was crazy at first and ignored it for quite a while … but it really is how you get to know people and become friends.
Then there are the one’s that I really just stalk 😉
(they know who they are)

#5 totally makes me laugh! Honestly, I give you so much credit for figuring out twitter on your own. Charlie started tweeting WAY back when so I always had someone to say “hey, is this ok to do?” or “what the heck is an RT?” – I probably would’ve been so flustered & quit if I didn’t have someone to rely on.

I remember staring at the screen thinking “this is not for me” because I had no idea what everyone was saying. Like reading a foreign language. But eventually I got it and now, well we know what it has turned into…

Really great tips that get at some of the etiquette how-to of Twitter. And of course thank you SO much for the mention. Question for you–what are your thoughts on #FF as well as thanking people for RTs? I’m torn on it…too much of that “stuff” clogs the Twitter feed with general nonsense. But then how do you reciprocate? I wish we could all agree that like goodbyes, thank yous aren’t always necessary or better as a DM.

I have a hard time with both of these as well. I don’t mind individual #ff’s but the ones with many names just get RT’d and RT’d and really clog up the feed. I try to always thank people for RT’s but usually group them together instead of doing them individually. I agree with you, it is not always necessary. My husband put it best, he said, “it’s like thanking someone for a thank you card.”

Having only recently started using Twitter after signing up over a year ago, it is nice to read tips from someone who has been on it longer. It is also good to know that I am, for the most part, doing everything right. Except, according to the comment above me I should be retweeting more. Have to get on that!

This is a great post, Jessica! I’ll admit – I found you on Twitter from @NaynaDub who had tweeted to you. I loved your name, so checked out your bio and saw you are from Michigan (so am I). OK, I sound like a stalker now, but it’s not weird because that’s how Twitter works. It’s an amazing tool. Another piece of advice I learned early on is that there is a cool formula for Twitter – 25% should be retweets of things you find of interest, 25% sharing information you learn, 25% original content (i.e. a blog post) and 25% interaction with others. May not be foolproof, but it seems to work well for many folks 🙂 Look forward to reading more of your blog.

Hmmm…I just signed up for a twitter account about 3 weeks ago, but I’ve done nothing with it. I think it would be easier if I wasn’t using a Razr flip phone…yikes! I totally need a smart phone. Thanks for the info. I’ll keep it in mind if I ever join 2011.

But sometimes, this results in lots of anxiety: when you make a joke but then don’t get a reply, and then you reread your joke and think, “Oh…no…that could’ve been really offensive.” And then you’re left to wonder if you’ve offended the other person. 😛

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I'm Jessica, 30-something mom to five, four in my arms and one in my heart.

On any given day you will find me taxi-ing a teenager, mopping up our latest "art project" and trying to remember when I turned the crock pot on… all the while, looking for the closest Starbucks drive thru. more